Creating Magical Creatures

The Order of Hermes has spells that create magical animals, causing the lazyminded to think that finding a magical animal is a needless bother. Correct to a degree, the rub is that such rituals are always high-magnitude ritual spells, and the time spent researching and inventing one of these rituals could be spent gathering a multitude of different types of creature. These rituals are creature-specific, in that a Creo Animal spell with an Ignem requisite designed to create a salamander will not create another magical beast that may also be aligned with Ignem. Besides creating a specific creature, the ritual also creates a pre-designed gender for the created beast, meaning that one ritual will not create both a male and a female. A second ritual will need to be invented if the maga wants to ultimately breed her created creatures, otherwise she will have to find a partner for the creature she created.

A spell that creates a magic animal is always a ritual, and cannot be instilled in an enchanted device. For the magical animal to have magical powers, requisites need to be included, based on the Form of the individual powers, and Vim is always a requisite. If the beast is intelligent — having an Intelligence Characteristic instead of Cunning — the ritual needs a Mentem requisite. According to the definition of requisites (ArM5 page 114), the Vim requisite shouldn't add magnitudes to the spell (it allows the ritual to have an effect), but other Form requisites should (they add effects to the ritual, such as

Conjuring the Magical Wolf

magical powers to the created beast).

CrAn(Me, Vi) 60 R: Touch, D: Mom, T: Ind, Ritual